


Keep Me

by malcontent (Whispering_Sumire)



Series: AMNESTY, BC FUQ IT❀ [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: (or actually werelion), Alternate Canon, Amnesty, BAMF Chris Argent, Blanket Permission, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Child Abuse, Child Abuse, Chris Argent Feels, Cook Chris Argent, Daddy Issues, Daddy Kink, Dancer Isaac Lahey, Dancing, Diners, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Isaac Lahey Feels, Isaac Lahey Needs a Hug, Laura Hale is a Good Bro, Light BDSM, M/M, Rape/Non-con Elements, Werewolf Chris Argent, also everyone has permission to remix or translate or continue, bc i'm done with it, meaning this has been in my computer for a long-ass time and is probably shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-08-17 00:08:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16505369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whispering_Sumire/pseuds/malcontent
Summary: "Come inside," he says, and the boy looks up at him, gaunt and daunted, "let me patch you up.""I—I...""Hey, what's your name?""... Isaac.""Okay, Isaac. I'm Chris. I'm not gonna hurt you, but you look pretty beat up, and if you won't let me take you to the hospital, will you at least let me help you get cleaned up, and patched up, and maybe a little fed?""...""Please, Isaac."Chris crouches down, so he's on level, holds out his hand, slowly, invitingly. The boy takes it, his fingers flinching at the contact before settling into the hold determinedly. The most wondrous thing about that, Chris thinks, is how fucking petrified this kid so obviously is, because, considering, doesn't that make this act of suspicious trust rely all the more on bravery?"Okay."





	Keep Me

**Author's Note:**

> Heed. The. Tags. All the trigger warnings are in there, essentially, but Isaac's dad is BAD NEWS, he abuses him, rapes him, and fucks him up. So, just, if that's a problem for you, do not read this, please.
> 
> Also: Amnesty; this is likely a forever WIP, if you wanna run away with it, feel free (please tag me, thoooo, I wanna gush at youuuu). If you read it anyway, bless you, seriously, this author loves you ❀

It started with a park, or, no. It started with a fire escape. Well, that isn't right either. It started with... a _smile_.

He was nine, and the letter had come in, saying his brother was dead. His father was. Livid. Then again, his father was _always_ livid. But normally he was livid with _Isaac_. For having his mother's eyes, or her hair, being as disappointing as she was, as slow, incompetent, stupid, reckless, whore. The last one he didn't understand yet, the last one wouldn't truly pertain to him until next year when his father would crawl into his bed and call him his mother's name and touch him softly for the first time in his entire life. A tender violence, but violence nonetheless.

But that day- after they received the letter- was the first time that his father punished him for something that _truly_ wasn't his fault. It was before he broke the freezer, it was when he still used the closet, before the whips, when it was still just his hand or his belt. But he was in a different mood, maybe. Perhaps grief _did_ effect him, in some way, to make him change the tactic. He'd said he wanted to prove to Isaac that he couldn't live without him.

So he left him, alone, without much on at all, bruised and cold and _drenched_ because the clouds had decided that it was a good time to have a fist-fight with the earth and water was as good a weapon as any.

A father and a daughter passed him by, the girl—she was in his class, she was maybe one of the kindest looking girls in the world, and she'd never once noticed him. Not that he minded. Most people don't and he's, honestly, perfectly okay with that. But today—there's something different about today, something exceptional. Maybe it's Fate, something engineered behind the curtain, some pieces the Old Gods have moved to orchestrate a win in the games they like to play, or perhaps it's just him, looking lost and alone, there, or... Or it's Camden, with angel wings and a melancholy smile.

Whatever it is, it's the reason why, that day, Allison Argent noticed him and with a tug on the sleeve of her father's coat, made _him_ notice Isaac, too.

"Are you alone?" he'd asked, his voice deeper than any Isaac had ever heard. It was the kind of voice that could command the stars to come out on the darkest nights.

"Go 'way," Isaac had murmured, weaker than he'd meant, and so whisper-quiet that the man probably had to strain against the rain to hear him. Allison made a quiet moue, and with distressed sympathy told her father they had to help him; but he couldn't burden them, and he couldn't leave his dad. His mom had made him promise, right before she died. _'Take care of them,'_ she'd said. He already failed Camden, he couldn't fail his dad, too. So he'd shaken his head, tried to keep his trembling down, even though he was _terrified_ because, despite his nice voice, Allison's father was probably just like his. Angry. Cruel.

No matter what they asked or tried to do, he just shook his head.

With a sigh, the older Argent bent down, and gave him an umbrella, a dark, plain one. Then, his lips spread around his teeth, crinkled his eyes and made the crystals in them _twinkle_ , like there were whole skies, whole seas, trapped in them. A smile. The first _real_ smile he'd ever seen, the first one that made his stomach full of butterflies and his heart beat faster.

"Take care of yourself," he'd said, and then he and his daughter were gone.

That smile had saved Isaac's life more times than he could count. For a long, long time, that smile was all he could hold onto, to keep himself from drowning.

* * *

He's not actually entirely sure when he started dancing. After his mom died, he knows, but the exact date is blurry. It felt like _flying_ , like some kind of freedom, some well of emotion and the cathartic outpouring that kept him sane. It was an elasticity, fluidity of motion, of movement, a language nobody but he and his body knew, something _no one_ could ever take from him, not even his father, though the man did make it harder—after all, dancing with broken bones is never a good idea.

It also built up muscles, which, even if he soon realized _fighting_ his father was something he couldn't do, at least it helped _surviving_ him. Running from him, too, when he could get away with it, or when he thought he'd _die_ if he didn't.

Which is how, when he was seventeen, he met Chris Argent the second time.

He'd learned a little about him since their first meeting. Learned his name, that he had a wife, that he was a retired weapons specialist turned cook. And, when Allison moved away, the gossip of the town had been about the Argents, how Victoria had fallen in love with someone else, and had taken his daughter, his money, and his reputation in the divorce. That had been two years after that day in the rain.

Then, this year, the man had moved back into town, bought out a two-story building, renovated, and was now the proud owner of the best diner Beacon Hills had to offer. He lived, Isaac knew, in the apartment upstairs, although Isaac only knew this because the park he often used to dance or as sanctuary, was right across the street from Silver Beacon. He will admit to some... slightly stalkerish tendencies, when it comes to Chris Argent. Part of him wants to see that smile again, part of him is far too scared to get anywhere near, and part of him, small and quiet and childish, wants someone to save him.

* * *

Chris has been through much in his life. Being a hunter isn't for the faint of heart, which is probably why his sister called him a coward when he quit, but he saw what she was becoming, what the life was turning him, his wife into. The wolves, who protected their territory and the innocents within it, weren't the animals, _they_ were. His wife disagreed firmly with him on this, but they managed to work around it, they had a compromise, they'd hunt, but their daughter—she'd stay out of it, she'd stay safe.

And then, a wolf, in order to protect themselves, Bit him.

He doesn't blame them, and he refused to kill them, after. He'd refused, as well, to kill himself. That, in the end, had been Victoria's final straw. But he hadn't been willing to leave his daughter, not for anything, no matter _what_ he was. So he'd _lived_ for her, for their little girl.

After, he'd done his best, fought for visitation, snuck it when he could, but, unfortunately, his ex-wife, his father, and his sister, had told her of her true heritage, told her what he was, and turned her against him. Perhaps not fully, the last time they talked she'd said she didn't hate him, and that she was glad he was alive, but she needed some time, he needed to give her that, respect her boundaries. So he'd gone, willingly, even though, to some degree, it had broken his heart.

Coming back to Beacon Hills had been good for him, in the long run. The Hales are one of the strongest, united, stable Packs, and, though his history with them isn't the greatest, Talia knows how to handle full-shifters, and, after learning his situation, after he proved that he was committed to his own redemption, she accepted him into her Pack. It's as odd as it is nice, to have some kind of family again.

He's closed his Diner for the night, just seen Erica, the twins, Scott, and Stiles, out, and he's not really expecting anyone or anything else to disturb him for the day. So he's understandably surprised when he hears whimpered breathing and scents blood on the air the exact second his head hits the pillow.

For a moment he deliberates just sleeping through it, but he can hear the sticky rasp of fucked up lungs, smell penny-copper blood in the air, and he just _can't_. With a grunt he gets up, goes to the window that faces the small alley in between his place and the bookstore beside it, and on the rickety fire-escape, the tiny, rusted metal landing outside his window, there's a boy. He looks asleep, he looks _broken_ , he's curled in on himself, back against the railing, mouth open to breathe in a disturbingly sickly sort of way, all blood-soaked and banged up.

With a frown, Chris climbs out of his window and shakes him awake. Startled, terrified spring-rain eyes flutter open to meet his. "You look like you need a hospital, kid."

"No," the boy says, eyes so, so wide, trembling, the sour scent of fear cutting through the acrid smoke-silk of pain. "No hospitals. Please. D-don't hurt me, I-I'll go. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have—" he gasps, swallows, shivers, there's a sound, like the crunch of gravel, like something sticking, as he tries to shift himself upright. "Sorry."

Chris only has to think on it for all of three seconds, because this kid is practically cowering, and he looks about the same age as his daughter, and he's _bleeding on his fire escape_. Really, there isn't even a choice here.

"Come inside," he says, and the boy looks up at him, gaunt and daunted, "let me patch you up."

"I—I..."

"Hey, what's your name?"

"... Isaac."

"Okay, Isaac. I'm Chris. I'm not gonna hurt you, but you look pretty beat up, and if you won't let me take you to the hospital, will you at least let me help you get cleaned up, and patched up, and maybe a little fed?"

"..."

"Please, Isaac."

Chris crouches down, so he's on level, holds out his hand, slowly, invitingly. The boy takes it, his fingers flinching at the contact before settling into the hold determinedly. The most wondrous thing about that, Chris thinks, is how fucking petrified this kid so obviously is, because, considering, doesn't that make this act of suspicious trust rely all the more on bravery?

"Okay."

* * *

It's like he's always been on this precipice, between childhood and adulthood, maturity and immaturity, strength and weakness.

It took strength, to take a bath in the house of a stranger who wasn't a stranger, to let him see bruises and cuts and scars, to eat food he made, and sleep in the bed he offered. It took weakness, the frailty of his disintegrated pride to allow someone to have so much pity, so much sympathy for him. It was immature to want to hold his hand, to want to tell him _everything_ , to want to crawl into crystalline eyes and find the father he's never had in a man he doesn't even know. It was mature to have all that _yearning_ , and to let it go.

He's always been somewhere in the middle, always been told he's an old soul, or that he acts too old for his age, and he's never quite understood it beyond the fact that he's in an in-between state, that he isn't normal.

His dad calls him a freak, and he guesses that's true, because other people say the same, though their words are coated in enough candy-gloss that, if he weren't paying attention, he might even think they were trying to be kind.

Chris... isn't like that so far. He's not sweet, and he doesn't smile like he used to when he had his wife and his daughter. He's gruff, and rough around the edges, and something painful, like shattered glass, lives deep within him, becomes more apparent when he sets Isaac's dislocated shoulder, stitches the deeper gashes in his back. Isaac thinks, maybe, Chris is just as broken as he is, though he's far better at hiding it.

In the morning, before Chris wakes, Isaac leaves. He feels heavy, and crusty, and _wrong_. He wants to stay, he wants to cling like a child, he wants to press his fingertips into Chris' chest until they sink through the skin, wants to press through, curl up inside his body and _breathe_.

He's fairly certain that's an unhealthy thought to have, he decides not to dwell on it.

Every time Isaac said sorry, Chris' frown deepened, like he didn't want those words at all, like they curdled the air like soured milk, like he _knew_ how they made his tongue taste like ash, like he _didn't_ know that they were the only words Isaac knew how to offer.

Yeah. Isaac decides not to dwell on that either.

* * *

He's still in pain, but he's healed enough for it, and his mind is clogged, and if he _doesn't_ , all of the emotions, all the _anguish_ is going to fester, boil him alive, and, god, he just needs an _outlet_. So he goes to the park.

He _dances_.

Spins, and feels weightless, flips, contorts his body around, puts his forehead and fists to the ground, as if he were praying, legs up, then he's splayed out, like he always is, like he's not restless, but instead _waiting_ , for the day his father will kill him. He shoves himself up on his knees, violent, fighting, still alive, twists, spins, and he's standing again, alone, _free_ , running. He jumps onto the side of one of the playground's structures, glides, arms outstretched like he could actually reach the sky, smiling like he really _can_ , then he falls, he stumbles, contorts himself down as his fists go to his chest, frustrated, defiant, lost.

He moves with every emotion, he lets himself go breathless, flushed and sweaty with exertion, but he doesn't _care_ , because he's getting it all _out_ , all of it, every goddamned thing in his bones, carved out, and then he's hollowed, empty, _clean_.

When he stops, when he's _done_ , and he feels _okay_ , or, maybe not okay, but _better_ , he stands there. One very, very deep breath in. Closed eyes. One very, very long breath out.

 _I'm still alive_.

And then, out of the corner of his eye, he sees him, beside the door into his Diner, back leaned up against the window panel, arms crossed over his chest, solemnly watching.

Isaac swallows.

He kind of wants to cry.

Instead—instead, he makes himself go to that place, that unthinking place of soft willful-nothing inside his head, picks up his backpack, and trudges home, pretending he doesn't feel sky-clear eyes on him the whole goddamn way.

* * *

It happens a few more times after that, Chris hearing a staccato heartbeat and labored breathing coming from his fire escape, and him letting Isaac in. It becomes some kind of routine between them—not an everyday thing, the timing for it is completely random, but when it happens, there are certain things, actions, they fall into that become some kinda normal.

He'll hear Isaac's heartbeat, open the window, and the boy will crawl delicately inside. Isaac can't handle touching that well, especially from _Chris_ —he suspects this is because he's an older male, for many reasons, one of which being that, one night, when Laura comes over for dinner and Isaac's there, he'd just seemed some kind of relieved, and whenever she'd reached out to touch, or been somewhere he didn't expect her, he hadn't flinched.

The conversation Chris had had with her afterward, about taking in strays and being an idiot had certainly been... insightful.

So Chris learns to always make noise when he approaches, and that if he's _going_ to touch, he needs to be completely transparent about it.

The boy comes in, he bathes, Chris patches him up, if he needs it (which is more often than not), gives him a change of clothes, and then goes into the kitchen to cook dinner for the both of them while the boy finishes up. They eat, Isaac takes the couch, and, in the morning, the dishes are done, the house is spotless, and the boy has disappeared, all without ever waking Chris up.

"I know he looks lost and afraid," he remembers Laura saying, "but you still have no idea who he is. You're... _special_ , Chris. You need to be careful."

"I can take care of myself. And I honestly don't think this is some hunter's ploy, he's—he's a _kid_ , Lulu."

"Maybe," she'd agreed, wry and sad, "but, unfortunately, that doesn't change anything. You know best out of all of us the lengths some monsters go."

"... Yes. Yes, I do."

"Just, _promise?_ Promise me you'll be careful?"

"Always."

* * *

Chris watches him dance, on the days he does it. Isaac's heartbeat is familiar enough by now he could pick it out of a crowd, a stampede, even. The boy dances like... god, he doesn't even have words for it. It's the rawest, most exceptional, brilliant thing he's ever seen. All that emotion, all that language in his body, in the way the muscles move and contort, the way he spins and flips and does tricks off of the playground equipment.

_Help. Don't look, don't touch. Love me because no one else does. Be kind. Let me die, be broken, be terrified, **feel** without pity. I am fragile, but you will not break me. **Touch** me._

It's breathtaking. Fucking awe-inspiring.

"You've been watching that kid for hours," Erica says, coming out of the diner and whacking him on the arm.

"He's good."

She watches beside him for awhile, then, "Yeah, he is, but you're neglecting your work."

"I'm sure you can handle it, Erica. Whatever it is."

Erica rolls her eyes and drags him back inside. Bossy spitfire, is what she is.

* * *

"You're," Isaac swallows down food that's rich and nourishing and tastes equal parts home and heaven on his unworthy tongue, "a good cook."

Chris snorts, "Kinda have to be, to do what I do."

"Chris..." The man looks up at him, quirking a brow, and he swallows again around a dry throat, worried and convulsive. "Why do you help me?"

"Because you're hurt and you're a kid and you need it," he answers, honest, simple.

And maybe that's it, maybe that's all. He never asks, he never expects or... or _hurts_. He's just there and he _helps_. But it's so, so hard to believe. And Isaac is still so, so scared.

"Then, you do it because... because you're kind? Just, because you're a good man?"

Chris' eyes darken, only slightly, but enough.

"I'm not a good man, Isaac."

* * *

Isaac really, really, really doesn't like small spaces. So, his first thought, when he ends up in a freshly dug grave with a backhoe above him, closing him in, trapping him, isn't about the odd animal noises he's hearing, or how upset his father will probably be that the machine is down, or even how long he'll be _down_ there.

His first thought is that it's too small, it's _too small_ —and he knows, he fucking knows he's freaking out about the wrong thing, the animals up there sound large and terrifying, but he doesn't give a shit about them, beyond the stray thought that if they kill him at least he won't be _trapped_ anymore. He can't fucking breathe, he can't move, all of his muscles have seized up, like they do when he's in the freezer and he, he remembers.

He remembers the _worst_ day. The _first_ time he'd been in the freezer. His father hadn't closed the lid, Isaac was in so much pain he couldn't move anyway, and he'd sat, in one of the lawn chairs they had in storage in that goddamned garage. Everything had smelled like mold and piss and blood, and his father had sat, glass of clinking ice and swishing, clear, brown liquid held loosely in his hand, just _staring_. Then he'd smiled, sick, twisted, gut-clenching, and his hand had drifted down.

Isaac hadn't been able to close his eyes, he was so fucking _petrified_ , he was frozen. He couldn't even _breathe_. He remembered thinking, if I just don't move, if I just don't move he won't touch me. It was... like, objectively, it was just weird. Because, well, now his father has fucked him almost as much as he's beaten him, but _then_ it had only happened a few times. And he'd watched, and he'd remembered buzzing, in his ears, like bumblebees, and the skin, the fatty skin of his father's... And then white fluid. He'd never _seen_ semen before. He'd been confused, for a moment, thinking his father had coaxed the wrong colored pee out of himself, thinking it looked a little like popping a zit, god, he'd been so uncomfortable, in so much pain.

He's pulled out of his downward spiral by a creak, the dozer-loader wrenched away from the square opening, and he's flooded with such profound relief he almost doesn't even notice the _lion_. The lion who stares down at him with eyes made of cut-glass crystals, and he _knows_ those eyes, he knows them to his core. They may be the only pair of eyes he trusts.

A maw, large, viscerally terrifying, closes around the clothes at the back of his neck, picks him up, and drags him out of the confines of that grave.

Then it's just sat there, in front of him, the lion, eyes searching.

Isaac reaches out his hand, tentatively, before he can stop himself, and he's shaking, there's a shiver, like ice, deep in his bones, and bumblebees in his ears. Fuck, he thinks, he's probably going into shock. The solid, fuzz-furred, warmth of the lion's head, underneath his hand, distracts him, grounds him, and he feels it release, like a tidal-wave, all his fucking fear. He shakes, and he weeps, and he trembles, and the _lion_ , the giant animal, all wild sand-fur and blue eyes and _gentle_ , it takes his weight, lets him curl into it and sob into its mane and just fucking fall apart.

He isn't even surprised, not really, when the mane turns into Chris' naked shoulder, when warm arms wrap around him, hold him as he shatters, and a voice, deeper, rougher, than mountains, tells him, "It'll be alright, Isaac. It's okay, I've got you."

Isaac himself says nothing, or too much, or all of it, he doesn't know, it's jibberish, jelly, tumbling out of his mouth and landing like sick in the earth. He whimpers, and whines, and trembles, and he tells Chris his dad beats him, he tells Chris about the freezer, the terror, the... the fucking _rape_. He tells Chris, and all he wants, throughout the stuttered ramblings is for the older man to _save_ him, he wants to call Chris daddy and he doesn't even know why, he's just so fucked up, so scared, so _weak_ , small.

He doesn't know how much of it comes out right, or how much of it really leaves his mouth at all, all he knows is that he cries himself to sleep on a dirty, bloody, tear-soaked shoulder, and the bumblebees die down to let in the quiet-rumble, lilty-hum of a rough sort of lullaby, gentling arms rocking him, back and forth, back and forth.

* * *

Chris looks the boy- safely tucked into his bed- over, and thinks. He thinks about everything Isaac confessed, sobbing and chilled with shock and probably triggered out of his goddamned mind; he doesn't think you can spend your life as Isaac has without getting some form of PTSD, and every form of claustrophobia. Along with... daddy issues.

He sighs, and he thinks it over, and he decides five things.

He's been lonely, without his daughter to take care of, even within his Pack, it isn't the same. He's always needed someone to _protect_ , he isn't entirely sure why. And Isaac needs. Something. Someone. Chris isn't sure if he's qualified, but he's. He's going to try anyway, besides, he's not letting this kid go back to an abusive household, now that he knows. That being said, therapy.

Therapy is non-negotiable, because as much stability and help as Chris can provide, he's not capable of helping Isaac through mental-health issues so extensive, not alone, at least.

A job, too, because independence, the ability to look after himself, to be proactive, he thinks Isaac needs that.

The last two are probably the hardest, the last two involve telling Isaac exactly what happened last night, the rogue omega, the whole 'were thing, what Chris is, all of it, somehow he thinks the kid will probably take it surprisingly well. And, then, they both need to talk to Talia.

As for the elder Lahey. Well, Chris would very much like to kill him, or hurt him extensively, at least. For now, it's a cross-that-bridge-when-we-get-to-it situation.

Fuck, Laura was right. Why couldn't he have rescued an abandoned puppy or something? Jesus, what's wrong with him?

* * *

[AMNESTY]

I honestly don't know _exactly_ where I was going with this fic? I have a terrible memory and this was something I gave up on a _while_ ago, but, vaguely, I know it was going to be Chrisaac, and that Daddy!Kink was going to be involved, and maybe some light BDSM immersion therapy or something? I know that Isaac was going to get more involved in the Pack, and go to therapy, and end up working at the Silver Beacon (Chris' Diner), and that Laura, eventually, was going to become as much his best friend as she was Chris', and I know that I wanted there to be, like, Victoria coming back to BH with Allison, and some sort of climax involving that that led to everyone realizing Ally being with her mom and grandfather was BAD NEWS; I don't know what I was going to do with Isaac's dad, and I don't know how far I was going to take the whole 'werelion full-shifters are rare and endangered and this is a problem for Chris' plotline, but I do know that I wanted Isaac to decide he wanted to go to college for dance. (I was going to turn him into a professional ballerina/contemporary dancer or some shit, I don't know).

The background relationships were _going_ to be Lydia/Allison, Boyd/Erica, Jackson/Aro&Ace-acceptance, and, bc I want to complicate things, Stiles/Scott with a burgeoning polyamorous Stiles/Scott/Derek (this threesome was going to be kinda important, because I wanted the explorative/this isn't technically a normal relationship, but we all love each other and schmoop to be an eye-opener for Chris, Isaac, and possibly a few other Hales). So.... that's all folks!


End file.
